THOMAS GRAY.t
GRAY probably wrote, and certainly published, fewer verses than any English poet whose work survives and circulates. He wrote much less than any poet who has attained so high a ;place in our literature. He speaks of himself as the most diminutive of all authors ; and it was with great difficulty that he and his publishers were able to find enough material for even a tiny book. Except for some few poems, Gray himself published nothing. His minute, scholarly, and various disserta- tions, the sole fruit of many years' industry, remained long in manuscript, neglected ; and they have never been given in full to the public. Gray's life, on the whole, was quiet and uneventful; and yet few English poets have had more biographers and editors. Mason led off with his octavo _Memoir. Mitford and Mathias have celebrated Gray's life and works in expensive quartos. The bibliography of Gray's ‘own work occupies twelve pages in Bradshaw's useful Aldine Edition, and several more pages enumerate works on him. In our own time, Mr. Gosse has produced an edition of Gray's work in four volumes and his life in one. And now Tovey has given us a new and more perfect edition of Gray's letters in three fairly corpulent and squat octavos. The number of letters contained in this edition amount to three hundred and eighty-five, and most of them are by Gray himself, though Mason's correspondence with him ie included. The editing has occupied Mr. Tovey for many years. The first Edition of the first volume was published in 1900, and the third volume came out last autumn. By a melancholy fate its publication and Mr. Tovey's death were announced almost together. The editor did not live to see the full completion ,of his labours, nor to receive the gratitude and felicitations which they deserve so amply. It only remains for those who °• Tit Last Phase. pp 203. IV ',Okra of- ?somas- Gray. Edited by D. C. Tovey. 3 vols. London : 1eorgq Bell eta son,. [3s. 6d. eaeb.1
can appreciate his industrious care to express their gratitude and admiration, as well as their regret that they cannot, convey them to himself. -
Mr. Tovey has given us, for the first time, a complete edition of Gray's letters, so far as the originals are known to exist. Iu the number of letters he Las exceeded Mr. Gosse by two hundred. In the fullness and accuracy with which the originals are reproduced he has far exceeded all previous editors. He has also, in many cases, supplied conjectural dates, which seem to us convincing in nearly every instance. To the first volume there is a preface of thirty pages; and in every volume there is a multitude of notes, which are a running commentary on the correspondence. There is scarcely a page without a note, and on many pages the notes occupy more space than the text. These details may serve to show the minute and extensive research which Mr. Tovey has given to his work. Thanks to that labour, we have a complete and accurate text of one of the best letter-writers in our language. So far as completeness and accuracy go; Mr. Tovey's work deserves the highest praise, and it is final. He has constructed as his own monument the classical text of Gray's letters.
In othet respects, Mr. Tovey's edition shows no unusual gifts of criticism, and he has less general knowledge of the eighteenth century than we should expect from the nature and duration of his industry. Many things in the text which require explanation are not explained, and others, as we think, are explained inaccurately. For instance, there is no explanation of the drink known as " hogan," which we imagine conveys nothing to the general reader, though it is to be found in the New Oxford Dictionary. If it had occurred in Boswell we may be sure that Birkheck Hill would have told us all about it. Again, we should like to know more of Gray's lodging in Rome, near "the convent of S. Isidore," and "not two hundred yards" from "the top of M. Quirinal." A reference to the Appian Way is derived, on Mitford's authority, from Stating. We think a more natural reference, both in itself and from the context, would be to Horace : " Gravis Appia tardis." The date of " sad Chatillon's bridal morn" is given as 1521 by Mr. Tovey, and he repeats his error of two centuries by saying her husband died in 1524. Horace Walpole wrote no "History of George II.," as Mr. Tovey says, but " Memoirs " of his reign. Walpole's friend and correspondent was Earl Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt, not " tad of Harcourt," as in Mr. Tovey's lax phraseology. A. certain cleric is said to have been elevated " to the episcopacy," which we hold is not a convertible term for the episcopate. Mr. Tovey seems to know nothing of Robert Wood's famous Essay on Homer, for he refers to it only on the authority of Mitford ; so that, apparently, he is ignorant also of Matthew Arnold's lectures "On Translating Homer," through which Wood has acquired a newer and wider fame. Neither does he seem to know the charming volatile of letters which Lord Chatham wrote to his nephew, Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc, afterwards Lord Camelford, who is described wrongly in a second note as of " Brannock." "A Pietas" (sic), says Mr. Tovey, "is a picture of the entombment of our Lord." A Pieta is a representation of Christ's corpse in the arms of His mother, and it is more generally sculptured, as by Michael Angelo in St. Peter's. It is strange that Swinburne should be omitted where Mr. Tovey enumerates English poems on Tristram and Iseult. " I could repay you with the story of my Lady F.," wrote Gray in 1760. " I cannot identify this lady," Mr. Tovey remarks, although she is referred to in the same letter as " my Lady F. (Sr. Ev. F.'s fine young widow)." Of course, the people referred to are Sir Everard Fawkener, or Falkner (1684-1758) and his wife. He was Voltaire's host and correspondent, private secretary to the Duke of Cumber- land, and Postmaster-General. Gray tells us that Mason and Stonehewer were at Lord Ferrers's trial " in the D. of Ancaster's gallery." Mr. Tovey does not explain that the Duke of Ancaster was hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England, which is the reason why he had a gallery of his own at a State function. He also bays that this Duke succeeded "to the title in 1742 "; but the monument of his predecessor, the second Duke, records his death on January 1st, 1741. We may remark in passing that the Dictionary of National Biography ignores all the five Dukes of Ancaster; as they and their duchesses occupy about three-quarters of a column in Mrs. Toynbee's Index of Perions they should be familiar
enongh to any reader of 'Horace Walpole, and no one can edit Gray or deal competently with the society of the eighteenth century who is not steeped in Walpole's letters. Mason's portrait of Gray is said to be in Mr: Gosse's second volume. It happens to be in his third, though this is numbered as volume two of the Letters. In a note on " poor Frederick Hervey," Bishop of Derry, Mr. Tovey speaks of his eccen- tricities making "some sensation in foreign parts," but he is apparently unaware of something that has more interest for us now, viz., that Bodoni dedicated to Hervey as " a passionate admirer of the poet," his beautiful edition of Poems by Mr. Gray, printed at Parma in 1793. In part of Gray's "Journal" from the Lakes he quotes Dante, " Inferno," canto iii., line 51, "Non ragionam lor ; ma guarda e passa." Upon this Mr. Tovey annotates "Mitford and Mr. Gosse (independently) ragionam.' Mason gives the word as Gray (teste me) wrote it. Dante's text is non regional.? " Gray and all his previous editors are, as it happens, correct. We may wonder what text of Dante Mr. Tovey used, and bow he would construe "ragionar " in Dante's line. Evidently Italian was not his strongest point.
It is not with any delight in fractious critic* that we point out these defects and omissions in Mr. Tovey's notes, but only with a desire that they may be amended in some future edition, and we lament again that emendations cannot be re- considered by himself. Having performed what we consider to be a duty, we may go on to say that Mr. Tovey has pro- vided a large amount of interesting and amusing information for the readers of Gray's letters.
In his judgment about Gray, Mr. Tovey seems to be haunted perpetually by Matthew Arnold's essay. Arnold says there that Gray " never spoke out;" quoting a sentence by Dr. Brown, which the writer applied only to Gray's last illness. Arnold extends the application and uses the words as a motto, or a sort of clue to Gray's nature and to his poetical pro- duction. In a modified sense Arnold's criticism is true. Gray never expressed all that was in him. Of all our poets he was perhaps the most learned, or, at any rate, the most scholarly. He had the soundest and most scrupulous conception of what scholarship ought to be. It might be added perhaps that of all our poets he had the best and keenest intellect. Certainly it must be conceded that of all our poets he was the finest and most fastidious artist. Yet with all these gifts be produced so little. He never spoke out. Arnold attributes this partly to the age he lived in ; and perhaps he lays too much stress on this. Gray was, we think, a typical outcome of the eighteenth century at its best, though he had many tastes which prove him a forerunner and an innovator. Gray's meagre production was due rather, as we think, to physical causes. He was never robust, and was always depressed. If he did not write more, he said, it was because he could not, physically ; he had not the strenuous driving force. He was also, through his physical weakness, a victim to his own passion for perfection. He would not circulate inferior work, or anything less than the very best, and he had not the vitality to create this either frequently or in long compositions. Mr. Tovey, we think, was never at the pains to understand what Arnold really meant. Perhaps he had so little sympathy with Arnold that he would not understand. He is always perverse and bard when be discusses Arnold's work : where Arnold is flexible, figurative, poetical, Mr. Tovey distorts his -words into a literal and prosaic sense which they were never intended to bear ; and the result is disastrOns, for Mr. Tovey. A contest between him and Matthew Arnold in matters of literary taste is like a race between a motor-car and a bath chair.
Arnold, we think, in his estimate of Gray does not allow sufficiently for the letters. In those Gray certainly spoke out. Few writers have been more frank. Few editors would print exactly what Gray wrote : at any rate, no editor has. Mason considered what he thought was due to Gray's reputation, and still more to his own dignity ; and Mr. Tovey was afraid of modern prudery. In these parts of his correspondence Gray was assuredly of the frank and healthy eighteenth century. No writer is known more intimately by us than Gray is 'through his letters ; and they show a man of keen and virile judgment, very practical and shrewd, • skilful and careful manager • of hie own affairs, and keenly 'interested in the life that,- was easing on round about hini: MoreoVer, his judgments were thoroughly honest as well as humorous. Walpole says he vats at his best in his sarcastic pieces; most of which have unfortu- nately perished. Like many good writers, he was not a good. talker. In company he was usually shy and silent, and he- talked best on paper, except to a few devoted Mends when her had one of them to himself. Bo that, on the whole, we may think that we can still enjoy the best of him in his inimitable letters. Comparisons are silly and profitless, and good thinga are to be valued most for their diversity, each of them Ion what it actually is, and for what especially it has to give us.. Let us say, then, that no letters in English, and few letters is any language, are superior to Gray's. From the brilliant letters, the " sun pictures" written during his tour with. Walpole, to the charming "Journal" among the Lakes, Gray is always an entrancing companion. Gray and Walpole are• inseparable in our minds as on our shelves, and among Mr._ Tovey's other merits we are glad to record that he always treats the trivial travellers' difference between Gray and Walpole both with common sense and with a right sense of proportion; that is, be regards all the silly and venomous gossip about it with the contempt it deserves.
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